told him, “I am drunk, Farhan, and today I will say whatever I want.” Bas, he became like a
television on mute, his mouth kept opening and closing but no words came out.’ She laughed
recalling the incident, now that time and death had smoothened out all the disorderly creases in her
marriage.
Anand ji did not talk about his wife except for the time he told Noni Appa about having a close
brush with the law. Jyotsna, his wife, in a fit of anger had thrown a big steel utensil at him, it had
missed and gone out of the window, crashing down, and had fallen right beside a toddler playing in
the compound below.
The building chairman Dr Aggarwal had filed a complaint after calling Anand ji to his house and
saying, ‘Mr Anand, this was not the first object to go flying out from the windows of flat no. 501.
There are many UFOs that have previously taken off from the fifth floor of Clifton. This time I have
to take serious action.’
Anand ji had gone to the police station and luckily the case had been dismissed. ‘But that was long
ago. Over the years she has also changed, from a volcano she has become a pressure cooker. She
still has a temper but instead of erupting she just makes a few shrill sounds and lets off steam.’
***
It was Anand ji’s birthday in April. ‘Which other day can it be on, has to be on April Fool’s Day,’
Binni teased her sister, when Noni Appa suggested cutting a cake for Anand ji that evening.
Ignoring her sister’s cackle, Noni Appa set out to make the day as special as she could for Anand
ji. She bought a cake from Monginis bakery, a few balloons and some streamers. She got him a
small gift as well, carefully wrapping six audiocassettes together, hits of Mohammed Rafi and
Mukesh, his favourite singers.
Having made all the arrangements, she took off for Glory beauty salon to get her hair set. On this
occasion, though, she removed the rollers in the parlour itself.
Anand ji was surprised to see a beaming Noni and Binni all dressed up and waiting for him on the
porch. They led him to the dining room festooned with the balloons and streamers, and with great
enthusiasm sang ‘Happy Birthday Anand ji’, with Bhondu and Tito also joining the celebrations.
Later that evening, Binni started watching a programme on Doordarshan and Noni Appa and Anand
ji went out into the garden to sit in their favourite spot under the trees.
Noni Appa, tilting her face towards the starlit night, pointed out Orion’s belt and Orion’s two
brightest stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse, twinkling on both ends of the constellation.
Anand ji was looking at Noni Appa more than at the sky, thinking about the little celebration she
had put together for him. He felt a warm feeling come over him, starting from his chest and
spreading outward, though he had not yet sipped from the glass of whisky in his hand.
‘I didn’t know you liked stargazing,’ he said.
Noni Appa, absent-mindedly twisting her hair into a bun and tucking one loose end behind her ear,
nodded. ‘Yes, because of Abba, when we were little, he would tell Binni and me all about stars,
planets and galaxies. See that star there? The light from that star has travelled eight hundred years
to reach my eyes. Gazing at it is the smallest way I can pay tribute to its long journey.’
Anand ji gazed at the woman across the table, a tenderness in his eyes that belied the casual way
he sat leaning back in his chair. When Noni Appa caught him looking at her, she gave him a shy,
embarrassed smile with an almost imperceptible shrug of her tiny shoulders.
One balmy May evening, Anand ji suggested they go for a walk on the beach outside Sea Breeze.
Anand ji who had no intention of carrying on the charade that Noni Appa was just his student,
despite her insistence, had stopped accepting fees from her for several months. Their relationship
though was still undefined and unacknowledged.
When they reached the soft sand near the edge of the sea, Noni Appa removed her slippers and
walked barefoot along the shore, slowly, her hip feeling stiff as they walked on in companionable
silence. Anand ji cleared his throat and rather tunelessly started singing a popular song, ‘Main pal
do pal ka shayar hoon’, switching from song to song till Noni Appa laughed, ‘Are you going to go
through the entire weekly countdown of Binaca Geetmala?’
She felt a sharp flare of pain in her hip and they sat down on the sloping sand dune, blending into
the landscape with half a dozen couples also on the beach, some with toddlers running towards the
sea and the mothers chasing after them.
They were sitting quietly, listening to the sound of the waves and the laughter of the children
playing in the sand, when Anand ji, who had stopped calling her Mrs Machiwala as they had got
closer, but had found no substitute, finally asked, ‘What does Noni mean, is it an Urdu word?’
Noni Appa smiled. ‘No, it is just a name our parents used to call us when we were little, Noni and
Binni, and it stuck. My real name is Noureen, but just call me Noni Appa like everyone else.’
Anand ji turned towards her, a hint of hesitation in his manner, till he said at last, ‘Appa means
elder sister, Noni. You are a few years older than me but you are not my sister.’ Stumbling over his
words, he said, ‘There is something I have wanted to tell you for a while. I don’t know how to say
it and don’t even know if I should, because I am a married man but I…’ He paused for a moment,
afraid and uncertain. Then gathering courage, he continued, ‘At our age I can’t say that my heart
flutters when I am near you, but it hums contentedly, and I want to spend the time I have left
listening to that sound.’
Noni Appa straightened the damp blue salwar sticking to her feet. She looked down at her
misshapen toes, arthritis having tugged at them till they had finally bent to its will, and said, ‘The
time to follow our heart has long gone by, Anand ji, the only thing left for the poor thing to do now
is to slowly stop.’
She gingerly stood up and they silently walked back together.
The next day Noni Appa spent the afternoon at Muskan, sitting on a chair facing the children who
had gathered around her. She was reading aloud from ‘The Brahmin and the Three Thugs’,
intermittently picking up little cut-outs of the characters glued to a stick. But today, unlike her
previous read-aloud sessions, she was merely going through the motions.
She found herself thinking about Anand ji, getting annoyed with him, with his need to voice what
had simply been understood. Why do people have to define relationships, underline each word till
the paper gives way beneath, she wondered.
Anand ji’s words had opened a door, spilling light on what Noni Appa had been hiding from
everyone including herself. So she had, she hoped, firmly slammed that door shut, because giving
up the pretence that this was a mere platonic friendship would mean giving up the relationship as
well.
She was a dignified widow, a woman who had led an exemplary life. There was a certain respect
in the way people said ‘Salaam, Noni Appa’ when she walked down the street.
She did not want the same people to start whispering about her, laughing at her, an old woman in
an unsavoury affair with a married man. Is this really how she wanted to be remembered? A life
spent meticulously polishing and maintaining a gleaming reputation, only to let it tarnish at the very
end?
She just hoped that Anand ji would now have the sense to leave things the way they were and that
he would not bring up this matter again.
Noni Appa lifted the cut-out of the goat, reading the next four lines, till she stopped abruptly, a
sharp-edged pain in her abdomen like a burning knife slicing through. She bent over, dropping the
cut-out – and suddenly the pain was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.
Aarti, another volunteer, got her a glass of water and Noni Appa gulped it down gratefully, wiping
her clammy forehead with her cotton handkerchief. A little disoriented, she answered Aarti’s
queries with, ‘Like Binni, I think I also can’t digest sprouts any more,’ referring to the moong salad
she’d had for lunch earlier.
Though Noni Appa and Anand ji did not exchange another word about fluttering or humming hearts
and went back to their regular ways, the following week brought a perilous predicament right to
their gates.
They were wrapping up their card game relatively early on Thursday evening – Noni Appa had
been feeling uneasy, the sandwiches lying untouched on the glass table. ‘My stomach has just not
been all right these days, I am feeling nauseous, Anand ji, I think I will go in and lie down,’ she
said and was getting up when an autorickshaw stopped outside the gate and she saw Baburam and
a plump woman in a printed sari arguing loudly, their words unclear as they melted into the sounds
of the busy lane.
Anand ji, who had his back to the gate, turned around as well on hearing the noise. He immediately
stood up in surprise. Seeing him, the woman bellowed, ‘There he is, I told you my husband is
inside. Let me go, you harami, or I will hit you with my slipper!’
She pushed aside a confused Baburam, walked up to Anand ji and, before Noni Appa realized
what was happening, swung her bulky arm and slapped the yoga teacher right across the face.
She then turned towards Noni Appa and, giving her a quick, decisive glance, sneered, ‘This buddhi
is your seven o’clock group class in Bandra? You kept saying, na, “Jyotsna, it is difficult to get a
rickshaw from Pali Hill, takes twenty minutes even if I take the garage road.”
‘Sala harami, at your age having a chakkar with another woman!’ She turned to Noni Appa, adding,
‘And you, old hag. Have some shame. If you are so desperate to clean the cobwebs between your
legs then go stand on the road outside and look for a man, leave my husband alone!’
And continuing her yelling and screeching till Binni, Bhondu and Tito rushed out into the garden,
she dragged a stunned and silent Anand ji to the gate, hailing an autorickshaw swiftly and roughly
pushing her husband inside.
***
The din in Anand ji’s house reached deafening proportions that Thursday evening and showed no
signs of abating. Once again, picture frames were smashed, vases sent flying and mortars and
pestles were turned into masala-encrusted missiles.
So many objects seemed to be flying through the air in flat 501 and landing on its tiled floor that
one would have thought it was in fact the domestic airport rather than the residence of Anand and
Jyotsna Joshi. Even the dogs, Gulab and Jamun – that Anand ji had reluctantly agreed to buy in a
moment of absolute cowardice instead of firmly standing up to his wife – crouched behind the
sofa, ducking the attacks and adding their sharp barks to their mistress’s screeches.
Anand ji, who had at first in guilt-ridden angst been silent, was now, as Sunday afternoon drew to
a close, slowly getting enraged at the lifelong bullying he had faced at his wife’s hands.
He had never even held Noni’s hand and over the last few days he had had to hear all sorts of
things. Jyotsna had ranted, ‘All you men are like dogs, anyone gives you a biscuit, you wag your
tail and lick their hand, but here, God knows what all you must have licked of that dirty old
woman.’
Anand ji had tried to protest and Jyotsna had added yet another analogy about dogs. ‘What is the
difference between you and Gulab?’ she yelled, waving towards the tiny, hairy dog. ‘He also tries
his luck anywhere he can, on Jamun, the sofa leg, the laundry basket, that elephant statue in the
corner, anything will do. Just like you trying your luck with that Muslim hag.’ She continued, ‘I am
warning you, if you ever go near that dirty woman again, I will leave this house and never come
back.’
Anand ji looked at Jyotsna, her hair dishevelled, face contorted with anger. Age, instead of giving
her the happy wrinkles of a life lived with smiles and laughter, had given her the furrowed brow
and two deep, vertical lines between her eyebrows that she had truly earned.
He could still see the remnants of the pretty twenty-two-year-old girl he had married. It had
seemed like such a splendid match then, with their religion, caste, economic backgrounds
completely in sync. Even their horoscopes had been perfectly matched, but living together had
soon shown them the vast differences between them.
The many years of anger and hurt now formed a mountain of indignant self-righteousness and regret
within him. A man can hear as much music as he pleases in his head but you can only accuse him of
disturbing the peace if he plays the record out loud, he told himself. He may have feelings for Noni
but there had been nothing between them. He was ready to stand his ground.
Anand ji had spent the last few decades keeping his head down and waiting for each storm in their
marriage to pass. A task that had been easier when he had been busy all day at the BMC office and
knew that even Sailesh had fled their volatile home as soon as he could, citing reasons like ‘Better
prospects in Bangalore, Papa’.
He glanced now at the wreckage of their small living room. It seemed to him that it stood for the
wreckage of his life. The first time she had started throwing her weight around, he should have
refused to tolerate her temper tantrums, taken a firm stance. Perhaps they would never have
reached this point.
He contemplated the years he had left and was filled with dread at the prospect of sitting in his
room with his Walkman and headphones, playing solitaire, day after day, till he eventually ran out
of days.
He turned to his wife and, with a finality in his voice that she had never heard before, said,
‘Jyotsna, you are welcome to stay and you are welcome to go. You have always done as you
pleased and now finally so shall I.’
Leaving her dumbfounded, Anand ji went to his room and firmly locked the door.
Wanting to call her husband’s bluff, as she perceived it, Jyotsna threw a few things into a small bag
and, screeching through the locked door that he would come crawling to her in a few days, left that
very evening.
***
The next afternoon at exactly four-thirty as usual, Anand ji reached Sea Breeze. He decided that he
would talk to Noni today, and while playing rummy put all his cards on the table both literally and
figuratively.
He pushed the small gate open – Baburam was nowhere in sight – and walked towards the garden,
e
xpecting to see Noni sitting on the wrought iron chair. He was surprised to see the lawn deserted.
He walked towards the house, calling out to Bhondu, who came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Arrey
Anand ji, Memsaab is with Noni Appa in the hospital. Appa started vomiting continuously, she
was shivering even after we covered her with many blankets. It has been three days now.’
Anand ji felt a chill in his heart. He hurriedly inquired about the hospital and Bhondu said that
Binni had taken Noni Appa to a hospital in Parle.
Nanavati Hospital was a large, white building with a creaky elevator and rickety wooden stairs.
The receptionist directed Anand ji to the first floor after sternly informing him that visiting hours
were only till 6 p.m.
He climbed up the stairs and entered the waiting area. He spotted Binni and her friend Shamim
sitting on the metal chairs. Binni looked pale and distraught, as if she hadn’t slept or eaten in days.
She had a white muslin dupatta around her head and her fingers were restlessly counting the beads
in her tasbih.
When Anand ji asked about Noni, she clutched his hand and said with a tremble, ‘Anand ji, it all
happened so suddenly. The doctors are saying she had some obstruction in her intestine and has
now developed peri…prito something...’ and she began weeping, unable to continue. Shamim then
added, ‘Peritonitis, they are saying her intestine ruptured and she developed peritonitis.’
Anand ji asked, ‘How is she now?’ And Binni sobbed, ‘She is in the ICU. They did the surgery but
everything had already become septic inside. Dr Shah was just here. He was saying that she is not
responding to antibiotics, her pulse is falling, blood urea and creatinine are very high. Her kidneys
are shutting down. Allah can’t be so cruel to take her from me, Anand ji. She is all that I have
left.’
Anand ji sat down on the metal chair, feeling drained all of a sudden, an overwhelming fatigue
creeping over him.
When visiting hours ended, Anand ji advised Binni to go home and rest. He would stay the night
and promised to call her as soon as he got any information.
He sat on the metal chair alongside numerous other people who also had their loved ones in the